| Here’s my soap box rant: I have heard the Wesley Willis comparison, and I certainly understand it. I am in fact getting on stage with the same instrument, employing the same kind of skills, hitting presets and not “really playing”--except for changing the keys and playing some leads. I know, I get it. But nobody ever looks at a guitarist and says “oh, he’s just an Eddy Van Halen rip-off” (unless, of course, he is) or looks at a violinist and says “he’s just ripping off Itzhak Perlman.” I use an instrument. It’s been done before. Everything that is being done has at one point or another been done in some form. All I can do is add my own voice to things, to make something a little new, a little different. I am not reinventing the wheel, and the big news is, neither is anyone else: get over it. And besides: anyone who has ever listened to Wesley Willis and then listens to me knows that the only real similarity is the instrument. (I don’t go to a Beck show and then write a song that goes “Beck! Be-ck! Be-ck! Be-ck!” but he would have.) |